Structure
- first reading thoughts + notes
- research + context
- summary from second reading
- [host] output 5min overview + formulate 2 questions that arise
Andre Bazin (trans, Hugh Gray)
The ontology of the photographic image (1960)
- died 1958
- post WWII writings on cinema
- vol I based on ontological basis of cinema "the cinema as the art of reality"
- vol II relation between cinema + close arts (theater, novel, painting)
- vol III relation between cinema + society
- vol IV would have been Neorealism
To follow: chapter 1 of vol I.
- he was a film critic, informed clarity + perceptiveness
- suggestion that within the origins of sculpture + painting lies a mummy complex
- Ancient Egypt religion revolved around a ritual of death; survival depends upon the continual existence of the corporeal body after death.
- Death is the victory of time, provided man with a defense, psychological need, a comfort.
- Therefore, first Egyptian statue was a mummy
- the preservation of life by the representation of life.
- similarity to prehistoric arrow shaped clay bears (successful hunt)
- evolution of art + civilisation (side x side) relieved the plastic arts of their magic
- Louis XIV was content to be survived by his portrait by Lebrun
- civilisation can't entirely efface our concern of time
- sociological perspective, explanation.
- the great spiritual + technological crisis that overtook painting middle of last century????
- cinema, the furthest evolution (so far) of plastic realism. (beginnings at the renaissance + baroque painting)
- painting has had a varied balance between the symbolic + realism.
- 15th Century, western painting began to turn from spiritual concerns, to a complete imitation of the outside world as possible.
- decisive moment: scientific discovery of the first mechanical system of reproduction, the camera obscura
- painting torn between 2 ambitions: aesthetic, spiritual reality, the symbol transcends the model AND psychological, (to duplicate the world outside)
- great artists have always been able to combine the two (ofc)
- however, faced with two essentially different phenomena.
- quarrel over realism in art (misunderstanding!) psychological + pseudorealism
- medieval art never passed through this crisis
- Why do people assume there is only 'one art form to rule them all' why can they not accept that there could be many?
- perspective was the original sin of western painting
- redeemed by Niepce + Lumiere
- photography freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness
- photography + cinema satisfy out obsession with realism
- painter ~ subjectivity, human hand casts doubt
- photography inferior to painting in the replication of colour
- conflict between style + likeness is a relatively modern phenomenon
- Chardin objectivity, not of that of the photographer
- 19th Century saw the real beginings of the crisis with Picasso, CENTRAL
- freed from the resemblance complex
- all art are dependent of man, only photography gains a benefit from his absence
- its production by automatic means has radically affected our psychology of the image.
- photography has power, proof something was there.
- perspective similar to family album, the cinema is objectivity in yimr.
- photography can surpass art in creative power.
- frame mesh wire w/ leaves 3d print ... leaves = pixel? wire cage fit together + sow
- photography is the most important event in he history of the plastic arts
- liberation + accomplishment, it freed western painting
- impressionist realism, opposite extreme
- pascals condemnation
- other hand, cinema is also a language
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research
- Andre died in 1958, aged 40, from leukemia
- film critic and film theorist
- believed a film should represent a film makers vision
important in the development of the auteur theory
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summary
- plastic arts (sculpture) + painting may lie a mummy complex
[def] [art forms that involve modeling or molding,
such as sculpture and ceramics, or art involving the representation of
solid objects with three-dimensional effects.]
- To provide a defence against the inevitable onslaught of time
- preservation of the body after death (preservation of life by the representation of life)
- art + civilisation evolved together and took away this magical property, but not entirely.
- the image helps us remember the subject and preserve him from a second death
- now part of a larger concept, creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real
- is art not more psychology than aesthetics? Of mans need to have the last word... the story of resemblance, the story of realism.
- Andre Malraux [french novelist] describes cinema as the furthermost evolution of plastic realism
- art turning towards complete imitation of the outside world.
heralded was the camera obscurer, a mechanical system of reproducing the world outside
- So now art, aesthetic and psychological, had achieved perspective, but not movement... something to suggest life in immobile works, Baroque art experimented with this.
-quarrel over realism in art stems from a misunderstanding, perspective was a sin of western painting...
- redeemed by Niepce + Lumiere
- Photography freed
- human intervention casts a shadow of doubt
- work without the creative intervention of man
-
- so, photography is superior to other mediums because of its capacity to capture reality, and by extension cinema is the furthest advance of this kind of realism.
- ironically photography seems to be getting less and less realistic as it has continued to evolve on its own. From being a genre that was intended to document and record reality it has become a means to subvert and create propaganda in the world with edited images and the results of Photoshop.
Simon Johnson, MA. Student :)
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
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